Friday, June 28, 2013

A new footprint has been added to my footprint database. This one was brought to my attention by a woman who saw me speak in Longview, WA for the Mount St. Helens Institute. Her husband, a truck driver, saw the creature on his nighttime route. The woman returned to the location a few days later to snap this photograph. I'm so happy she used a scale item!

Thursday, June 27, 2013

A bigfoot conference entitled, "Bigfoot Discovery Days" will be held on August 2nd and 3rd in West Branch, MI. Speaking at this conference will be Dr. Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University, and local investigators Phil Shaw and Jim Sherman. There will be many activities to partake in, and it should be a great regional event for bigfooters in this part of the country to come together and network.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Director, producer, and comedian Bobcat Goldthwait's new movie centers around, and is named after, the bigfoot capital of the world, Willow Creek. The fictional movie is a "found footage" genre piece about a couple on a road trip trying to locate the famed Patterson/Gimlin Film site.

Besides being filmed at recognizable locations around the town of Willow Creek, Bobcat and his production team ventured deep into the woods up Bluff Creek and shot much of the film on location in the vicinity of Louse Camp and the PG Filmsite. Also of note are a few cameo appearances by various real life bigfooters including Steve Streufert and Tom Yamarone.

A few weeks ago I was invited to a screening of Willow Creek in Arcata, CA, and I was very impressed with the film. In my opinion, it is by far the best bigfoot movie yet produced. There are some very funny parts, and also eerily creepy scenes to balance everything out. The climax of the movie is a very long, uncut scene that accurately depicts the mood and feel of being in the vulnerable position one puts themselves in while camping (and bigfooting) alone in remote wilderness areas. Downright creepy, if you ask me.

Here is the trailer that has recently been made available. Be a bit careful, as there are some F-Bombs and a bit of non-graphic nudity in the trailer. That's not characteristic of the film, but there are some PG-13 aspects to the following. Enjoy!

Saturday, June 22, 2013

If you are a fan of apes, then you probably have heard about the famous albino gorilla, Snowflake. He was euthanized in 2003 to alleviate his suffering from skin cancer, but recently some genetic tests were done on his remains that found the most likely cause of his rare albinism was inbreeding.

For some time now, it has been a concern among bigfoot researchers that perhaps human development has cut off populations of bigfoots from one another thus forcing them to breed with their own kin. Often held as evidence of this hypothesis is the prevalence of three-toed footprints. I would disagree that footprints showing three or four toes indicates inbreeding, though. I think that these footprints either strongly illustrate the flexibility of the sasquatch foot, or are the results of outright hoaxes. However, perhaps the prevalence of albino bigfoot sightings might be an indicator of inbreeding, especially in the light of the above revelation about Snowflake?

"Pinkie" and a friend at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sancuary

A quick search using John Green's excellent (and searchable) online database indicated that there were 99 reports of white or off-white bigfoots on record. Certainly, many of these sightings are reporting the same individual bigfoot having been seen multiple times in a certain area. Also to consider is that Green's database includes sightings from many decades.

To explore the possibility of albinism being an indicator or possible inbreeding by bigfoots, I undertook a thought experiment. I plotted Green's white bigfoot reports on a Google Maps layer, and then tried to attribute the sightings to individual bigfoots. I took into consideration the sighting locations, their proximity and connectivity via mountain ranges and river systems, the years the bigfoots were spotted combined with the life expectancy of apes, and some size estimates as well (bigfoots would obviously not get smaller as time passed, so strongly differing size estimates where the creature got smaller over time were attributed to multiple individuals). I color coded the sightings in a way to show what I think might be reasonable to show the same individuals showing up in various locations.

A map showing sighting reports for white bigfoots

I admit that the above process is pretty speculative, but it gave some interesting results. I have plotted encounters with over thirty white bigfoots since 1955 (there was one outlier from 1938). It is very possible that some of the sightings I attributed to more than one individual are actually the same bigfoot with either a longer lifespan than I used as a base, or with a stronger wanderlust than I expected. So, to be more conservative in my estimates, I will cut this estimated number by more than half to just fifteen.

Albanism is pretty rare in any species, but in great apes it is extremely rare. In humans, about 0.0059% (1 in 17,000) of the population has albinism. However in the other great apes, the only known examples are Snowflake the gorilla and Pinkie the chimpanzee, both of whom are now dead. (Certainly there either are other albino individuals in the wild, or have been in the past, but I''ll ignore this for our purposes.)

Snowflake casting the camera a sidelong glance.

Looking at the population estimates of the the three great ape species with documented albinism might give us some vague insight into whether or not this could be an indicator of inbreeding in bigfoots. Using the numbers for humans (1 in 17,000), the 15 individual bigfoots hypothesized above would give a population of bigfoots as around 255,000. This is clearly way off the chart as far as a reasonable population estimate for bigfoots.

Using the other apes gives us no better estimate for bigfoots, as albinism is even rarer in those species. The world populations estimated are 100,000 to 200,000 for chimpanzees, and an estimated 100,000 for the lowland gorilla (the species Snowflake was). There are no known examples of albino mountain gorillas nor orangutans. Again, using 15 individual bigfoots and applying the population numbers for other apes, the calculations yield over a million bigfoots. Obviously way too many for an obviously rare species.

I suppose it is possible that albinism is more common in bigfoots than in any other species of great ape, but this seems unlikely. Also possible is that my numbers are way off due to incorrect speculation on my part, hoaxing or misidentification on the part of witnesses, or any number of errors. Also to consider would be these "white" bigfoots actually being of the more blonde variety which would be far more common, or even that bigfoot hair turns increasingly more grey or white as they grow older as humans do. However, I also believe that not all witnesses who have seen white bigfoots have reported them, further confusing the matter.

From my efforts to reverse engineer a reasonable bigfoot population estimate from the number of white bigfoot sightings, it seems that these individuals are being seen way too often to indicate a normal ratio of albinos in their population. It seems that there are way too many individual bigfoots with albinism than there should be.

I see no way around the idea that inbreeding could possibly be affecting the bigfoot population. Inbreeding seemed reasonable even before this thought experiment due to the species' rarity, as well as the possibility of human development cutting off breeding populations. If my assumption that bigfoot genetics generally should follow the same pattern as the other apes (including humans) is correct, even one albino bigfoot report should be extremely rare, and there are dozens of sightings describing white bigfoots.

As always, seeking answers about bigfoots yields more questions than answers.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

An interview I did a couple nights ago has now been posted on StolenDroids.com, and geek-culture website. The hour-long interview can be listened to by clicking this link, or by playing the interview on the media player embedded below:

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

A new children's book has hit the stands to help encourage the young people in your life to start bigfooting. Cindy Rose Caddell has combined her love for bigfooting with her artistic skills as a photographer and artist to produce a well-written book perfect for any bigfooter between the ages of two and nine years of age.

Monday, June 10, 2013

This footprint was found by a witness (name withheld) and his girlfriend while camping at Beaver Creek in southeast Idaho. The area was a marsh near a beaver dam.

While this print is human in size and proportion, the location, context, and step lengths make it possible that this is a juvenile sasquatch track. The print is not clear enough to gauge how “human” the print is. The fifth digit often is the deciding factor, but it is not well defined in the only photo taken of the print. It is shared here as a possible indicator that sasquatches are in the area.

Malania Kehl is the eldest resident in Nanwalek and knows many traditional stories about history and culture. One is how her birth village, Port Chatham, was haunted by a Nantiinaq (Nan-te-nuk), a creature similar to a Sasquatch. Because of Nantiinaq's ghostly hauntings, Port Chatham was deserted and shunned. Those who once lived there vowed never to return.

Malania was born Jan. 25, 1934 at Port Chatham, a small village at the edge of a peaceful moorage. The villageonce offered shelter for many people, including Capt. Nathaniel Portlock’s ship on his 1786 Alaska expedition. But when Malania was a baby, the family abruptly moved away from Chatham and fled to Nanwalek.

“We left our houses and the school, and started all new here,” Malania said as her words were translated from Sugt’stun to English.

What had frightened Malania’s parents hadn’t been a single event. Over a “long period of time,” a Nantiinaq – or big hairy creature – terrorized villagers. Also haunting the areas was the spirit of a woman dressed in draping black clothes that would come out of the cliffs.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

One of my contacts from New England just gave me permission to share a recording he recently obtained. His research has focused on an area of high activity in a national forest near his home. By frequenting the area, he has obtained some interesting interactions, including this one below.

I love his reaction to the sounds... At first he's excited, but when the sounds get louder he becomes a bit more apprehensive about the situation (the clip was edited to take out an expletive). Very cool...

Thursday, June 6, 2013

My good friend, Thom Powell got some news coverage last week in the Portland Tribune. The article focuses on Thom as a science teacher and how he is also interested in bigfoot. Go figure, bigfoot and science go hand in hand? Yes, they do.

While Thom is known for being on the outside of the mainstream of bigfooting, if a "mainstream of bigfooting" can even exist, he has arrived there by applying the scientific method to ideas not normally considered. He finds a hypothesis that he likes and does small experiments to see if it's correct. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but he always revises his thought and moves to the next one.

While I don't necessarily agree with all aspects of Thom's picture of bigfoot, I really like the man and respect where he's coming from. I'm glad he's doing the things he's into because, as Thom himself would say, that means that I don't have to.

A few months into one’s freshman year at Wilson High School, alumni of Jackson Middle School in West Portland Park will start forming friendships with those of Robert Gray in Hillsdale. They will trade stories of their middle school years, recounting horrific homework assignments and raving about favorite former teachers. But while former Jackson pupils tend to have a long and varied list, Robert Gray alums all seem to name the same one: Mr. Powell, a teacher of eighth-grade science with a penchant for Sasquatch. Not the annual music festival, but the mythical creature also known as Bigfoot.

Thom Powell has taught at Robert Gray Middle School for nearly three decades. He is a tall, gray man with a raspy voice and a disarmingly piercing gaze. Though his appearance is domineering and almost off-putting, his students know better. They flock to his classroom as soon as the bell rings, vying for his attention to their preteen attempts at sarcasm and deadpan. Powell meets them bit for bit, speaking with complete candor to his 14-year-old pupils. Truly, he is a gentle giant, and so, he says, is the Sasquatch.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Sharon Lee and Moninca Rawlings are hosting a series of bigfoot expeditions. The first is to be held June 13 - 16 at the legendary Salt Fork State Park in eastern Ohio. Having bigfooted there before, I can attest that it is an excellent area to seek the big guys.

For four days and three nights, you can experience the thrill of a lifetime searching for the elusive creature known as Bigfoot. Join seasoned researchers as they take you on an expedition, learn from seminars and hands on training, as well as actual night investigations, to help you along the road of Bigfoot research. I am a big proponent of attending public expeditions because you get to learn from experienced researchers, and you can network with others who share this same unusual interest. The people you meet make bigfooting even more rewarding.

You can register for a Bigfoot Adventure Weekend for a very reasonable price by clicking this link.